You Just Don't Know You Know (a short Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

You know her. You just don't know you know her.

She was born in 1919. As a young woman, during the 1940's and 1950's, she and her husband, Gower Champion, performed in several films for MGM (including a remake of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film, Roberta). But that's not why I'm convinced you know her. And it's not because the two of them starred as dancer and choreographer, respectively, in a 1957 TV sitcom. As it turns out, she lived a very long life. She only died a few years ago. It's possible you may have known about some of her late-in-life work (The Awakening Land, Fame).

But they're not why I'm convinced you know her.

Before she was Marge Champion, all grown up and married, she was a teenager named Margie Belcher.

And quite a good dancer.

In the mid-1930's, Walt Disney hired young Margie to come to his studio and dance for his animators. When questioned about how watching her dance helped them complete the cartoon they were working on, Disney reportedly declared, quite forcefully, "We are not making a cartoon! We are making art." What they were making was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." And if you've seen it, you've seen Margie Belcher: when Snow White walks, when she sits or stands, when she dances, that's Margie.

Margie was the motion model for Snow White.

Knowing this story changes how we see that animated film, the very first of its kind. No one had every made a full length animated film before it, and even in the short cartoons of the day, no one had gone to such lengths to ensure the animated characters moved like real people.

Life is like this. We spend our days seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. We use our senses to help us understand our experiences. And, most of the time, that's the whole of it. But every once in a while, someone reveals something to us that changes how we think about what our senses have communicated to us.

From now on, whenever you see Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," or even just a clip of Snow White doing something, you will recall that a teenage girl named Margie, a real girl, is behind every move.

Having such revelations change how we think about things.

That is what is meant by this week's Lectionary selection from Psalm 19:7-14. And that is why we read the Bible.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/

Proper 21 (26) (September 27, 2015)
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
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Friday is almost here. It gets here pretty quickly. I hope you can join us for Lectionary Breakfast. We still gather at 8:00 a.m. at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant for an hour of revelation, tasty food, and, a staple, laughter.

No one will be asked to model.

Enjoy the week!
Steve